'We've not gotten justice": 20 years after brother's death, woman still seeks closure

Crystal Porter still remembers the day she saw her brother carried away in a body bag.

“It was a beautiful Sunday morning, an Indian summer kind of day. A lot of people were at the rest stop that day,” she said. “We really don’t know exactly what happened.”

She said it could have been a simple robbery or something more well-planned. Whatever the case, that Sunday morning, Charles Porter Jr. was shot at the rest area on Interstate 85 outside Kings Mountain.

“My grandfather had just died six or seven weeks before. Our grandparents’ house had burned down and my grandmother lost everything. I said, ‘God, how strong do you think I am? To handle all of this at one time?”

Porter had seen her brother, who they called Chuck, on Friday night. She was going to invite him to eat at Pizza Hut with her and their mom. Chuck had already been, so she told him she would see him Monday morning, when he was planning on moving into his new home.

“He was going to move into a new house on Monday. He’d spent three long years working on that house,” she said. “It’s just a coincidence that he was murdered the day before he moved in.”

‘Everything a Boy Scout should be’

Growing up, she said Chuck was her protector.

“He was my big brother, my only brother. He looked after me. We lived out in Waco, in a rural area. You didn’t have anybody to play with but your sibling if you were lucky enough to have one. He was five and a half years older than me. He protected me through school,” she said.

Chuck had plans to retire at 49 after working for the state. He wanted to have a taxidermy business on the side, having taken a correspondence course in it during his junior year of high school. Chuck was also an Eagle Scout and had accomplished that distinction at the age of 15.

“He was everything a Boy Scout should be,” Porter said. “He was always willing to do what he could for others.”

When Porter died, he was 39 years old. He left one daughter and a 6-month-old grandson behind.

‘Please come forward’

Although Thursday marks 20 years since his death, Porter said she never forgets.

“It’s like it was yesterday. It’s so vivid. I can recall the conversations, everything,” she said.

Her faith in God is the only thing that has brought her through, she said.

“We always had a strong faith in God. If it hadn’t been for God, I don’t know what I would’ve done,” said Porter.

Her dad was devastated by Chuck’s death.

Page 2 of 3 - “My dad never would let us talk about Chuck. But I would see him out there near the dog lot, talking to his dogs and just crying,” she said. “It was such a devastating blow. I hope no family ever has to go through this.”

That is the reason Porter said she continues to seek justice for her brother’s murder.

“The main point is—I don’t want anybody else to ever have to go through this. There’s somebody out there that knows something. Please come forward,” she said, through tears. “I’m begging people to come forward. Somebody somewhere knows something. I don’t care how small it is. I just want someone to be brave enough to come forward.”

Porter said the rest stop where her brother was killed was torn down by the state, despite the fact that it was a crime scene.

“It’s just a grown-up area now. I go back every once in a while. I’ll stop up there and just walk around,” she said. “It was the last place he was alive.”

What’s next for the case?

Determined to find justice, Porter is now working to get her brother’s case featured on Cold Justice, a TNT show in which professional investigators work with local law enforcement in rural communities to bring closure to a case.

“Cold Justice is very interested in doing this. Their prime goal is going into rural areas,” she said.

It took her two and a half years to get the case on America’s Most Wanted.

“It aired the weekend of July 4 in 1996,” she said. “They generated about 150 leads from the show and they did re-air it.”

Porter said she has forgiven the people who killed her brother, and now only wants some closure.

“I came from a family of honest people, hardworking people, Americans who believe in the American way and believed in justice,” she said. “We’ve not gotten justice. I just want some closure.”

By the numbers:

-14,168: the number of murders in the U.S. in 2012

-62.5%: the percent of murders cleared by arrest in the U.S. in 2012

-8: the number of unsolved homicides in Cleveland County

Source: fbi.gov, Cleveland County Sheriff's Office

Have information on the case?

-Call the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office at 704-484-4822.

-Call the sheriff's office detective division at 704-484-4787.

-Call CrimeStoppers at 704-481-8477.

County cold cases

The Star spoke with Sgt. Mark Craig in the criminal investigations division of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office about the Charles Porter Case and other cold cases in the county.

Page 3 of 3 - What’s new with the Charles Porter case?

It’s an active investigation. Tim Adams is investigating it. We’ve sent some evidence to the state lab in the case to see if improvements and DNA might help us generate new leads. We’re waiting on that. And maybe the story will generate something from the public.

What would it take to solve the case?

Certainly if we generated something at the state lab, maybe a DNA hit, that might help solve the case. Aside from that, maybe a passerby or someone from the public that may have information on the case that they’ve never come forward with. Anything that might generate a lead, someone else to interview or talk to that may give us something that we didn’t know.

How many unsolved murders are there in Cleveland County?

We’ve got eight unsolved homicides.

Is the Porter case the oldest cold case?

I think the Charles Porter case is the oldest. And then, they’re spread out from that time until now.

What makes a case a “cold case”?

When you get to a point in the case where the leads are dried up and the case is over a year old, you can start considering it a cold case at that point. But it depends on each case.

How does the sheriff’s office deal with cold cases?

Around anniversary dates of crimes, tips will start coming in because it gets back out in the media. We start following up on tips. Sometimes family members will hear something on the street. Sometimes it’s just public generated tips that create an environment for us to follow up on things. Other times, we sit down and talk about what we can do on a case. We may generate an idea that leads us to work on a case for months at a time.

Have any former cold cases in the county been solved?

We solved one about a year and a half ago where we actually made charges. And that one had been a cold case for a number of years. We actually had two different cold case detectives working on it. They went back and reviewed the case, worked on some existing leads and got enough information to charge the people involved.